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How To Make your Electric Bill Lower

Energy can represent a very large chunk of your monthly paycheck. If you factor air conditioning, furnace, heater, and hot water heater. So how can you lower your electric bill? According to the Energy Department, an average American family spends a total of $2200 per year on utilities. Improving your energy utilization can help you reduce your bill by at least 20%. That extra money you can save.

Takeaways: Make your Electric Bill Lower

Electricity bill takes a big portion of a household paycheck every month. The complete breakdown by State could be found in this report, published by the Energy Information Agency in 2017. It goes from $87 to more than $100 per month. Obviously, your personal or family usage play a bigger role in the process. But these are the strategies that you can implement to lower your bills.

How To Make your Electric Bill Lower

Install ceiling fans in all rooms: It will help keep the house cool in the summer and warm in the winter. They use less energy than the furnace or an A/C unit.

Keep your home sealed tight: this option will protect you during winter by limiting cold weather access in the house. Inspect your attic and your roof for ice dams, check for gaps pipes that go through walls, seal and insulate outlets and switches and check the basement for cracks. In addition, weather stripping around doors will allow air in and out.

Turn off electronics: Electronics guzzle power even when they’re off. Plug them into a power strip, then turn off the strip.

Motion sensor: They turn off lights automatically so you don’t waste electricity. They also add as timers.

Insulation conserves energy:Insulation reduces the exchange of heat through a surface. In a well-insulated home, less warm air escapes from the house during the winter, and less cool air escapes during the summer.

Limit electronic devices in your house: You don’t need to have many electronic devices in your house. Fewer devices mean less electricity consumption. Furthermore, you can set time and days for specific devices access.

Add solar panels to your home. Going off the grid with solar panels will help reduce your energy bill while installing solar panels can be expensive, the benefits may outweigh the initial cost. Moreover, the extra energy generated from your solar panels can be reinjected in the grid.

Wash your clothes at the laundromat once a month: Image when you are using your washing machine all the energy you use.

Other Methods to Make your Electric Bill Lower

Air dry your clothes: This might be hard to do on the coldest months, but once it summer, spring, fall or sunny winter you can definitely take advantage to dry your clothes.

Daylight: Take advantage of daylight to turn off lights in your house. Take out the curtains.

Natural air: Open your windows especially during summer/spring/fall and some period during winter when the weather is not too cold to ventilate your house.

Plant trees: Plant trees near your home, you’ll create shade, which will eventually cool off your home as the trees grow. The Arbor Day Foundation estimates that homeowners can save up to 20 percent a year on their energy bill by planting trees around their home.

Dress comfortably: Always put on warm clothes during winter or cold weather, cover yourself with blankets, have blankets also in your living room and turn on the heather when it is absolutely necessary.

Don’t buy or rent big houses: Bigger house equals a bigger electric bill. Try to get a house that meets your needs and optimize all the space you have.

Always do rounds before going to bed to double check all the house corners to make sure no lights, no unnecessary electronic devices were forgotten on.

Out of the box strategies

Shared electric bill: if you live in the same house with adults you can request for each to pay a contribution towards the electric bill. They could be your adult child, cousins, brothers, etc…

Limit the number of people in your house: More people more pressure on the resources in your house. The same goes for electricity, if you limit the intake of people in your house, you will be able to control your energy bill.

Limit house events: such as parties, community meetings and other events that could drag in large crowd till dawn. You will be surprised by how much energy bill goes up when you host an event. Now imagine you host multiple per year.

Take advantage of your chimenea: this is a great way to heat your house especially during winter.

Electric heater: Because the normal heater is a more expensive option leveraging electric heater in some specific area of the house will lower your electric bill.

In conclusion

Saving money on your electric bill is not very easy and it requires the necessary mindset shift. Some of those strategies are pretty simple and easy to implement other require few efforts or help from an expert. But if you put in the time and the effort you will be able to same good money.